I'm off to see the wizard

Merry X Mas from Phitsanulok

Well I'm back in Phitsanulok, not like anyone would know where that is but either way I'm here. Today I woke up in Sukhothai and decided to make my way over to Phitsanulok after a great ham and cheese omlet. I caught the local intercity bus here and then the local city bus from the main bus terminal into the city to find a place to stay tonight. I was the only farang (foriegner) on both of the buses and they were so cheap the intercity was a buck and the aircon city bus was under a quater. I went to check out the guesthouse from my travel guide but when I walked in they had no idea what I was saying and then this really old short guy came in after me and took me to his place. It turned out that he didn't speak a word of english and was also deaf so we used some hand signals and head shakes and I got a nice room for around 7 bucks with a tv and heated shower. After that I headed out to the TAT (Tourism Authority of Thailand) office, to get a copy of the bus scheduals and a map of the city plus whatever other information I could get. The guy that worked there spoke some broken english and the info I needed so I headed out to find some lunch. I stopped at the local market and got what I beleive was pork on steamed rice and a bowl of soup. The lady working at the stand didn't speak any english either so I just pointed and shook my head again and ended up with a great lunch for only yee-sip baht (20) or 65 cents with a liter bottle of water. After that I walked down along the Nan river over to Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat, aka Wat Yai and walked around quickly but didn't really enjoy it. It was very crowded I guess b/c of christmas and it seemed more like a market then a religous site with people buying crap all over the place and most of the people in the temple weren't actually praying but sitting on the ground taking pictures with their camera phones of each other infront of the main buddha statue. After that I walked along the river a bit more and came across people selling bags of living fish and eels and also very very cute puppies. I spent some time sitting at the edge of the river reading all the info I picked up at the TAT office before heading back. On the way back I stopped at a book store to pick up a Learning Thai-English book so that I can try to talk abit more with people here. And if they can't understand what I'm saying I can just show them the book and it has it written in Thai so they can help me pronouce it properly or at least try to. I'm still having trouble with Ayutthaya and for some reason Phitsanulok keeps slipping out my head. Tonight I'm going to check out the night market which looks huge and try to get to sleep early b/c I'm going to catch the 7:20 bus to Chiang Mai which takes 7 hours. That means I have to catch the local bus by 6:45 to get to the main bus terminal in time. Woo hoo that will be lots of fun!

posted by Brandon Share @ 3:18 PM